well john marburger washington d.c. and here's what's coming up tonight the big picture. apparently president obama didn't win reelection on the merits or because americans overwhelmingly disagree with republican policies no according to mitt romney the president won because he gave gifts to minorities in young people what do these comments say about romney and the republicans also last week volatile states passed ballot initiatives officially recognizing marriage equality doesn't this shows strong support for l.g.b. rights in america and mean that america is ready for marriage equality on a national level and later the show will have

a your take my take live segment your chance to call in and ask a question or make a comment live on the air. you need to know this speaking of republicans from wisconsin something we've been doing a lot of wally allow me to introduce you to the late republican senator from wisconsin joe mccarthy picking up the lead of fred koch the father of today's billionaire koch brothers who helped found and fund the john birch society joe mccarthy was convinced that the united nations was a communist bureaucracy brought into being by the democratic he called the democrat party here senator mccarthy very small. of administration democrat more know the president. and the nomination. if you're

a chronic how minister frankenstein which they themselves have. but is none of them they still get to call that administration democrat party the call them democrats is an insult to the millions of loyal americans i'm a sudden to call democrats they should be referred to properly as the commies are it's true that f.d.r. pushed the idea of world war after world war two of joining the united nations democratic president harry truman actually signed us up for the un in one thousand nine hundred eighty five and it's also true that in signing up for the united nations the united states surrendered a small amount of our sovereignty and as much as we can no longer unilaterally declare war on another nation unless they attack us first without getting the approval of the united nations of course this is true of every other nation in the un as well the un was created to promote world peace an idea that doesn't sit well with the neo cons and chicken hawks for example here's what george w. bush's u.n.

ambassador john bolton had to say about. secretary building in new york it's thirty eight stories if you lost ten stories today it would make a difference the u.n. has provided right wing fear mongers like mccarthy the coax and bolton a lot of grandstanding opportunities over the years but has never lived up to their warnings that it's common to destroy america but there's another group that they don't want you and i talking about that is actively as we speak destroying america at least the american middle class and as the world trade organization and the trans national corporations that make it up since those transnationals also own most of our media this is not a topic you'll hear about on network or cable news but so-called international free trade by the deputy has radically and rapidly promoted the destruction of the american middle class but billionaires like the coax in the john birch society their father created they would much rather we all be afraid of the united nations

it after all has very little power and occasionally even speaks out about the destruction of economies around the world by corporate power the latest paranoia being pushed by the coax john birch society and its brother in the republican party is a project of the united nations division for sustainable development called agenda twenty one which came out of the un's conference on sustainable development in rio de janeiro brazil this past june agenda twenty one calls for member nations to engage in a conversation about how to reduce poverty worldwide and in the process of making the world wealthier how to manage the development that comes along with that in an eco friendly way. as not something or oil barons like the coax would like to hear about it talks about things like sustainable energy corp responsibility in educating the world's children the billionaires are not happy so right wingers in america have reinvented agenda twenty one as something completely different it's

now a mind control plot that's being run by that black guy in the white house mr b. hussein obama seriously this is what they're saying to republican controlled states legislatures have already passed resolutions condemning the un's agenda twenty one and last week the speaker of the georgia house of representatives chip rogers broad field seriously into the georgia house to explain a power point presentation how this mind control will destroy america says he told the assembled republicans and told me today on the radio that obama's mind control techniques called the delphi technique was developed by the rand corporation during the cold war and obama and the un are using it on us not only that seriously said this is comparable to joe stalin's five year plans and mao tse tung's great leap forward neither of those in retrospect worked out all that well but on the other hand neither those have anything to do at least here in the reality based world

with the united nations or agenda twenty one but don't try to convince republicans in the south about that soon georgia will probably join kansas and tennessee in approving a bill that condemns the un's project to educate nations about how to develop their natural resources sustainably will condemn them as both socialist and communist and of course not a word will be spoken about how billionaires in the transnational corporations in the world trade organization are screwing the american middle class both in the united states and in those other countries where they're pushing their so-called austerity and starve the beast agendas. senator joe mccarthy and daddy fred koch both now looking down from the great beyond no doubt are smiling and applause. now moving on from the retrograde elements of the republican party to the man who was recently the leader of the party mitt romney the guy who just couldn't be santa claus at least that's how he's spending his landside last president obama in last

week's election created a new york times the los angeles times mitt romney convened a conference call with donors on wednesday and blamed his loss on a president who was very generous and promised to give away big gifts to women minorities and the poor those gifts around these referring to are things like access to contraceptives women affordable student loans for young people health care for poor people and a pathway to citizenship for undocumented immigrants who've been living in this country since they were little kids he said you can imagine for somebody making twenty five or thirty thousand or thirty five thousand a year being told you're now going to get free health care as huge. romney calls and gifts rest of his call of the basic essentials needed to make it america but what do these comments say about the man and about his party it continues to play the gift card against the president as as richard follower reza strategist and host of the richard fowler radio show richard welcome back thanks for having me tom

great to have you with us so is romney right did he lose because president obama showering all the rest of us with gifts but i got to tell you first leaders a very strong word for romney i think i missed you the next some of it was the leader of the party i think the party is quite in shambles but of course i think you know if he considers health care for little kids who have asthma a gift i just i don't know i was sort of shows with the republican party given how confused they are i think earlier today or yesterday bobby jindal came out the governor of louisiana came out of mediately and rejected those statements and condemned mitt romney seems to me that he's a sore loser with the budget but those comments are consistent with things that rush limbaugh and bill o'reilly said and really track back and i think in a very significant way to the mid seventy's when jude wouldn't you know the party was just in total shambles after the nixon resignation and you know and as he came up with those two santa claus theory that he published in the wall street journal and he said the democrats have always been the party of santa clause they give they gave away so scary they gave away medicare that he went on one of benefits they

gave us a forty hour work week they gave us safe food safe drugs say you know everything it's all the democrats the republicans always said no so the republicans had to become a the party of santa clause would become the tax cut santa clause and b. we've got to force the democrats to shoot santa clause and we do that by running up huge debts what republicans are in office and screaming about the debts of democrats come in isn't this just an extension of wineskins playbook that ronald reagan really took seriously and he triple the national debt of course that is that everybody did and george bush did the same exact thing they do they play this game with the american people but this time in this election the american people actually won what the republicans tried to do they tried to crush them they tried to destroy them they tried to stop them. going to the polls they try to put voter suppression laws in place all across the country and we saw turnout even higher than in two thousand and eight because the people the american people are smarter than the republican party thinks they are and will mitt romney make statements about you know how he thinks about immigrants or how he feels about african-americans or how he feels about young women or how he feels about young

people if you think that's going to get his party back in power it's the sadly mistaken the republican party has turned into a party that can only control the united states house of representatives if they don't get their act right and they can only do that because a jury matter exactly and you know which is a whole other thing we've got to deal with how is it that net romney's offer to give a twenty percent tax cut to millionaires and billionaires is to give it well that's my point i mean that's the exact point i think that's the point of the american people proved election night he wants to give millionaires and billionaires tax cuts what he wants to take away programs like wic he want to take away programs like head start i think what we saw from mitt romney when he picked paul ryan was the exact roadmap that he was going to take this country on if you was elected cuts cuts and more cuts to poor people to middle class families and the american people said hey we're not having that we're not having that exit polls show fifty three percent of americans believe we should raise taxes on millionaires and billionaires because it's the right thing to do we're not raising their taxes by millions and

millions of dollars are just asking them to pay their fair share and i think what we saw from the president this week with his meetings at the white house and his press conference that he is not going to be this it's a new president it's a new day in town it's a new sheriff different from the sheriff that was on two thousand and eight yeah well let's hope so because you know there's been a lot of us who have been hoping that president obama has been a little less progressive than we would like simply because the election was coming and and you really think that we're going to see a change now in the next four years almost definitely i think we saw a change in the first two weeks of this new president you come out he's come out first of all when the republicans attack susan rice he came out of mediately and said listen if you want to pick a fight pick a fight with me and guess who's going to win i am as well when they went after. he just backed away exactly threw him to the lions it's a different i think the world to be this president has more testosterone the president in the last obama i dislike obama three point zero and i'm really excited of what i think we're going to see in the next four years i think the president is really going on this fiscal cliff cliff stuff and in particular the president's

really going to push the below here and say listen republicans you have to come to the table but we're going to get off this cliff we're going to drive right off of it and the only way you're going to come to the tables with tax cuts increasing taxes for millionaires and billionaires he said that in every campaign speech that he made during this entire election season and i don't think he's going to balk at his promises we've heard. him say they feel the same way that i do i think the president said a strong message and i think hopefully we'll see millionaires and billionaires pay more. i mean you know the times of greatest economic strength in the united states the fifty's sixty's seventy's top tax rate was ninety one percent it's not you know raising from thirty six to thirty nine is not going to kill the economy richard thanks so much for being with thank you so much appreciate it great to have you with us richard. coming up president obama wasn't the only winner in last week's election the community scored major victories to more americans supporting marriage equality than ever before is it time for the federal government. to make it happen right now.

here is mitt romney trying to figure out the name of that thing that we americans call. i'm sorry i missed you guys here's what you said. you know what it is my tears. want to listen to featuring the liberal press. because usually. you know you distract us from what you want. i should care about because they're a profit driven industry that's facials the garbage he calls it breaking news i'm having martin and we're going to break that.

you know sometimes you see a story and it seems so you think you understand it and then you glimpse something else and you hear or see some other part of it and realized everything you thought you knew you don't know i'm sorry welcome to the big picture.

and screwed news the question of who will represent florida's eighteenth congressional district is not yet although democratic candidate patrick murphy was declared the winner in the race and was even attending orientation on capitol hill his opponent freshman tea party congressman allen west is refusing to concede especially now that eight hundred votes vanished over the weekend when an unsanctioned recount was conducted on a like tronic voting machines in one county in the district those vanishing votes allowed was to gain five hundred votes on murphy bringing the margin between the two candidates very close to that half percent. which would trigger an automatic recount but what happened those vanished votes and isn't this more proof that we can't trust electronic voting machines for the latest on this story brad friedman joins me he's the founder and editor brad blog and one of our nation's finest investigative reporters brad welcome back to the program thanks tom good to be here

great to have you so where do we stand today on florida's eighteenth and what how do you how do you recount an electronic voting machine. this is a remarkable story and you know this is the exactly what you and i have been warning about for almost a decade now here's where things stand at this hour allen west has filed for a recount of the early votes of all of the early votes in just one of the three counties that now make up the eighteenth congressional district in florida he wants that all the early ballots in st lucie county to be retaliate so now paper ballots these are paper ballots for the most part there's some touch screen voting systems there for a disabled voters but for the most part their paper ballots and you got it right they did a partial recount on sunday of the last three days of early voting only and only in st lucie county and eight hundred votes just went away they used the same

machines to count the same ballots and now there are eight hundred less of them for some reason patrick murphy lost around six hundred votes allen west lost around one hundred votes so west actually gained five hundred votes he's now about two hundred fifty votes shy of an automatic recount that would be triggered in red florida if he's point five percent behind murphy fred could it be that this is just the the old fashioned stuff that they used to do down in the south i mean that somebody just shredded eight hundred ballots you know it certainly could be i doubt it. what i'm what i think is more likely here is that these systems that they're telling these valleys on these ballots on simply don't work you count the same ballots in the same machine and they don't count them the same way twice i mean this is alarming this is disturbing this is what we've been warning about for

a long time and you've got in st lucie county you're using machines made by de bold and then in the other two counties that make a florida eighteen martin county and palm beach county you've got two other brands of voting machines one made by e s n s one bad by sequoia and remember those sequoia machines in palm beach county are the same ones that just this past march announced three different races incorrectly announced the winners of two of announced losers in two of those races to be the winners these machines don't work tom and so i'm a little surprised frankly that allen west is not calling for all of the ballots to be retaliated and by hand because in florida it's actually illegal to count a ballot by hand once it has been tallied by the voting machines really when did that law go to effect. after two thousand for some odd reason this is what the

republican never again will we double check the count because when they did in two thousand they discovered al gore got more votes than george w. bush that's right allison a republican allen west here may be hoisted on the republicans own for tarred because of this law now he might be able to go to court and ask them to change it but you know he's not even asking right now for a hand count and he's not even asking for all of the ballots he's only asking for early ballots which is quite strange but i suppose if he gets enough ballots in his favor you know he just gained five hundred votes in this partial tally if he gets a few hundred more. and the rule for the automatic recount will kick in in florida so you know i never thought i'd find myself getting behind allen west of all people but but you know i got to tell you if you believe in election integrity and if you believe that these are nonpartisan issues i've been saying for years this is not

about right left this is about right and wrong then this is exactly the time to get behind alan west and demand that all of those paper ballots be counted and counted publicly by hand so that supporters of both west and murphy can know if in fact he actually won but then there's you know added there's the added problem that some many of those ballots in the e s s machines the touch screen machines there is now about the sequoia you know about that right now actually they use mostly paper ballot op scan in both of the other two counties as well yes and as ops can and sequoyah aabs can because in the state of florida you may recall in another house election back in two thousand and six eighteen thousand votes disappeared on the touch screen voting system at which time governor charlie crist outlawed those touch screen systems across the state of florida for all but used for accessible

voting so they have mostly paper ballots the problem is they're still counting them by computers and verifying those ballots for accuracy by no one no one is doing that and remember the deeble. machines that are used in this one county and st lucie county the ones that you know don't count the same ballots the same way twice are also used in thirty four other states in the country tom so should we be properly there as our entire as you well know brad i'm very troubled but i'm guessing that most americans frankly are really troubled by it it's it's really quite remarkable my recollection and i may be wrong on. this but my recollection is that when al gore in the two thousand election asked for went to the states courts and asked for a recount in three counties because the three counties where he thought that a recount might you know flip the election his way it turned out that had had the

statewide recount been done he definitely would have won in those three counties he wouldn't have won that was the gist of the new york times article a year later in september of not in november of two thousand and one but in any case that when he went to the court and when that ended up before the state supreme court the state supreme court essentially said you can't just cherry pick counties for recounts or areas for recounts because these aren't votes like some physical abstraction these are representations of the will of individual voters of individual people who are covered by the fourteenth amendment equal protection under the law and therefore the entire state is going to have to be recounted that was the decision of the state supreme court as i recall in two thousand wouldn't that same logic apply here wouldn't it be appropriate for allen west to be saying count recount the entire district rather than just one county in fact if he says just recount this one county where i think i'm going to pick up some votes isn't

that a violation of the fourteenth amendment rights of the voters in that congressional district well that's certainly what the republicans did argue back in two thousand you're exactly right and when al gore as they like to say cherry picked certain counties now he was following the law at the time that he did that but they looked at it and they said well it's not fair to count just certain parts you have to count it all so it seems that allen west has maybe forgotten about what happened in two thousand and what happened with bush v gore yeah i think if he is going to get a recount i think he will have to ask for a recount in all three counties and not just for the early ballots but for the election day ballots as well that could. change everything and you know we could find out that the other two counties the machines there can't count the ballots correctly either but yeah i think you're absolutely right he's going to have to ask for all of the ballots to be counted and i'm somewhat mystified frankly. by the fact that he doesn't realize that and that he hasn't asked for

a broader count than he has asked for today while you have a hearing is going to be tomorrow you're talking logic and we're talking allen west well so there you go there you go getting all partisan again i mean i'm sorry it's i just i can't help myself brad friedman brad blog dot com thanks a lot brad thank you great to have it was. crazy alert the sopranos of the simple life file this one under who turns out that in lancaster pennsylvania the home of the amish people are a group of men who you really don't want to mess with in the land of simplicity there are still fights and disagreements and that's where the. mafia comes up you heard that right there is such a thing as the amish mob it's even getting its own show this december on the discovery channel take

a look. it's very different within the amish community very conservative and everything is this agree. that things don't go like this should that's where we step in and. say. yes. so next time you get amish country and buy a pipe from the nice little old lady sheree up or else. just. as the good the bad and the very very her reagan asli arguably the good senator elect elizabeth warren elizabeth warren has come out in favor of filibuster reform

something i've talked about many times on this program in a blog post on huffington post warren wrote that america will never be able to accomplish what truly needs to be done if in her words we can't get it up or down vote in the senate she went on to say that the current usage of filibusters in the senate is paralyzing progress and that she will help lead the change to create sensible filibuster reform on day one of a new session of congress or so many pressing issues in america right now in the change we need will only come about if the senate is finally able to act. the bad senator john mccain mccain has been relentless in attacking president obama over his role in the bed gazi consulate attacks cain has repeatedly called for a select committee to investigate benghazi and for the government to release more information on the attacks well yesterday mccain skipped a closed door briefing where administration officials were giving more information

on benghazi and he skipped it so he got attend a press conference with fellow witch hunting republicans trashing the president about it bengazi i guess senator mccain really doesn't want the answers all that badly after all and the very very ugly maine republican party chairman charlie webster in an interview on a local n.b.c. affiliate webster said he was astounded by the dozens and dozens of blacks who voted in the election and said he thought it was odd because he didn't know any black people and so they went on to suggest that because a year he or any of his friends. personally know any black people in the area they must have been committing voting fraud drugstores comments will speak for themselves and are very clear. the phone lines are now open for our your take my take lives segment and you want a chance to ask me a question live here on the big picture give us a call at two o two i know for twenty one thirty four talking to you right after the break.

you know sometimes you see a story and it seems so you think you understand it and then you. see some other part of it and realize that everything you. are welcome to the big picture. uy uy. uy kook.